


Gun - Shot

by QueenMegaera



Series: A Game of Association [3]
Category: James Bond (Craig movies)
Genre: Gen, Missing Scene(s), Relationship Study, Spoilers for Skyfall, Swearing, Though really nothing you don't see in the trailer
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-22
Updated: 2014-02-22
Packaged: 2018-01-13 10:56:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,325
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1223689
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/QueenMegaera/pseuds/QueenMegaera
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"As Bond crawls onto the bank of the river, coughing up water and, it feels like, most of his lungs, he's still not entirely sure he's alive. He can't hear his own coughing over the roar of the water and the ringing in his ears. It's a strange experience, like watching a film with the wrong sound effects put in.<br/>He's not entirely sure where he is or what he's doing there. He can hear M's voice in his head, barking out an order:<br/>'Take the bloody shot!'<br/>He presses his hand to his shoulder. It comes back bloody."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Gun - Shot

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers for the beginning of Skyfall. Missing scenes, framed between two scenes from the movie. Some bad language.
> 
> This is what happens when I'm supposed to write something - I end up writing other things. Oh, well. At least I'm writing.

_" I said take the shot!"_

_"I can't. I may hit Bond."_

_Bond hears the voices, but he can't quite process the words. He's on top of a speeding train and he's fighting for his life – his and that of every agent on that list. He'll take down this bastard if it's the last thing he does. M knows that. Doesn't she?_

_"Take the bloody shot!"_

_He's hit in the shoulder. He flies backwards. His feet lose contact with the train. He falls._

_He thinks: "That's two agents down in one mission, for a list that's now gone. Fuck it all."_

_He hits the water._

\-- x --

_As Bond crawls onto the bank of the river, coughing up water and, it feels like, most of his lungs, he's still not entirely sure he's alive. He can't hear his own coughing over the roar of the water and the ringing in his ears. It's a strange experience, like watching a film with the wrong sound effects put in._

_He's not entirely sure where he is or what he's doing there. He can hear M's voice in his head, barking out an order:_

_"Take the bloody shot!"_

_He presses his hand to his shoulder. It comes back bloody._

_He faints again._

\-- x --

_Bond wakes up. Consciousness returns slowly, one observation after another._

_He's lying down, in a bed._

_Deep breath. Take stock. He's alive and breathing freely. He feels slightly drugged, but it doesn't feel like anything more potent than regular painkillers._

_Smells. Sounds. Lights._

_He's in a hospital._

_More clattering than beeping. Not the most exclusive of hospitals then._

_Voices. Faces._

_He's not in England._

_At this observation, he tries to sit up. His head spins. Voices are raised. Hands push him down._

_No, he decides. He wouldn't get far. Safer to stay here a while longer than to attempt to leave in this state._

_He sleeps._

\-- x --

_He wakes again in the night. He tries to remember where he is and why he's there._

_"Take the bloody shot!"_

_The memory speaks in M's voice. An order to him?_

_Instinctively, he flexes his shoulder. Spikes of pain shoot through his arm and torso. No. An order_ against _him?_

_He can't remember._

_"Take the bloody shot!"_

_He tries to concentrate. It slips away. There's no real memory, there's only those words and a fleeting feeling. He feels ..._

_... betrayed. He feels betrayed._

_There's a lump in his throat. He decides it's nervousness over not knowing where he is._

_He falls asleep again._

\-- x --

_He asks the nurses how long he's been there. Three days. Came in beaten, shot, unconscious and half drowned._

_More memories of how he got there return to him. "I can't. I may hit Bond." "Take the bloody shot!"_

_No, he hadn't been betrayed. Just not trusted enough. Just expendable. This shouldn't matter to him. He's always been expendable. It's his job to be expendable._

_It matters._

_He gets up and leaves the hospital when he's been there five days. They ask him not to leave. They say there's still shrapnel in his shoulder. He doesn't care._

_No one has come looking for him. They will at least have looked for his body, won't they? He must have been washed up somewhere where they didn't even expect his dead body to turn up, then. But even so, a nameless Caucasian male with a shoulder wound who spends five days in a Turkish hospital? They can't have been looking very hard._

_"Take the bloody shot," M ordered._

_Well. Fuck you too, M._

\-- x --

_James is no hypocrite. He knows and admits that he has issues with trust, and with women, and with trusting women. That doesn't change the fact that he's always trusted M more than any man he has ever known. If anything, it makes this whole thing worse. He's being childish, he knows. He shouldn't expect special treatment. Not even when he's been receiving it for years._

_Maybe he's even had special treatment from the very start? He was one of M's golden boys, after all. The hand-picked ones. Talented, driven young men. Orphans. Men who had no connections, no family, by no choice of their own. Starved men. Little ducklings, imprinted on M. She could have left them alone. She could have let them go out into the world and find_ _real families instead of using them, tying them down to the Country and the Service, and perpetuating their loneliness._

 _Then again, she_ did _let him go once. When he fell in love with Vesper and decided to leave. M just sighed and knew he'd come back. And he did. Tail between his legs, he came running back to mother, to hide under her wings and never leave again._

_Maybe she was protecting them. Maybe the real world was not a good place for men like them. Men like Bond._

_So he doesn't even think about attempting to start a normal life, this time. He wouldn't set himself up for that disappointment. He finds a gambling den, and when he has money – and has fought off the men who are convinced he must have cheated – he finds a beach, somewhere to drink, and someone's bed to sleep in. This is what he knows and understands: guns and fighting, cars and clothes, but also cards, drink, and the female body. Let others have their nine to five jobs, their families and their picket fences. He doesn't belong there._

\-- x --

_It's morning, the bar is empty, and Bond is considering leaving his latest lover before she becomes too attached, when the news reader utters the words "terrorist attack" and "London" in the same sentence. That's when Bond looks up, and sees a clip of black smoke rising from the MI6 building. His heart stops._

_"Take the bloody shot!"_

_No. He left her behind. He doesn't care anymore._

_Yet he watches her office burn, and his heart stops._

_He's been lying to himself. It's not just that he can't live the way ordinary responsible people do. He can't even live the way irresponsible people do. He can't stay among the palm trees and the beach_ _huts. He doesn't belong here any more than he belongs in suburbia. He belongs in that building – the one they're showing on the CNN news, on fire._

_She was attacked, and he wasn't there. He feels like a dog._

\-- x --

_He doesn't make the decision to go back. It's a decision that was made for him, a long time ago. He makes a decision to go to her flat, though. He stands by the window as she walks into the room and heads straight for the bottle. Like mother like son, he thinks suddenly. She's dressed in black. For him? No, he realises, for the people who died in the attack. But he's seen the obituary sitting on her laptop._

_She startles even though he hasn't moved, even though she hasn't turned her head in his direction, and spins around with only a quiet gasp. Rumour says she was a field agent once, in the cold war days. Bond doesn't doubt it for a second._

_"Where the hell have you been?" she asks._

_He smiles._

_"Enjoying death. Double-O-seven, reporting for duty."_

_She asks why he's been pretending to be dead. He throws her words back in her face: "Take the bloody shot." As he knew she would, she merely reminds him that he knows the rules of the game. She doesn't welcome him back. There's no warmth, no sentimentality. The only emotion on display is a sense of glee in her voice when she tells him they've sold his flat._

_"You should have called."_

_"I'll find a hotel," he says._

_"Well, you're bloody well not sleeping here."_

_She stalks out of the room without another word. Bond smiles to himself. He didn't feel like he was home when he came into the country, or even when he arrived in London._

_He's home now._

**Author's Note:**

> Comments are love. ^^


End file.
